The camera shutter is a guillotine. It severs the head from the history, the body from the soul, leaving only the aesthetic of suffering to be consumed over coffee.

We walk among them like gods made of linen and digital sensors. We do not see people; we see variables. We see a mouth and call it a hunger statistic; we see a pair of hands and call them a labor metric. To give them a name would be to invite a ghost to dinner, so we keep them anonymous, a blurred background of “diverse” shadows that validate our own bright, solid existence.

The Gospel of the Void
We have come to save them from the burden of who they were. We wipe away their ancestors with a wet cloth, scrubbing the stories of their grandfathers until the skin is raw and blank. We tell them: You began the moment we arrived. We watch them with a terrifying, clinical tenderness.

Their Eyes: Opaque, ancient, weathered by a sun that doesn’t belong to us.
Our Eyes: Clear, translucent, weeping for the “tragedy” we have carefully framed.The Difference: Our children are made of glass and poetry; theirs are made of clay and necessity.

The Holy Silence
When they speak, we hear only the wind. We sit in their circles, nodding with a heavy, performative empathy, but we do not let their voices travel home with us. Their opinions are mere symptoms of their “condition.” We are the doctors of their destiny; why would the patient tell the surgeon where to cut?

We break the land. We shatter the foundations of their homes to build a monument to our own mercy. And as the dust rises, we lean in close, whispering into their ears like a parent to a confused infant: “This is for your own good. You will understand when you grow up.”

One last click. The flash blinds the mother, the child, the ruins. We have the proof now. We have captured the “culture.” We can leave now, back to our pure world, carrying their captured faces in our pockets like trophies of a war we pretend we didn’t start.

©️Beatriz Esmer